Set Me Free
by NinjaCookieXD
Summary: All his life, Tony has never felt right. He decides to take action on ending it. Warnings: suicide, transgender!Tony, depressive themes, self harm mention.


**_PLEASE READ BEFORE THE STORY:_**

**_I would advise against reading this if you are either transgender, and/or suicidal/self harming as it may be triggering. It contains Tony's thoughts about being transgender, never receiving help for it and wanting to die. Although then again, I'm probably a hypocrite for saying 'don't read' as it's something that I would read, despite what it would do to me._**

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><p>He couldn't take it anymore.<p>

His life was a lie, his friends didn't even know him, the girl he loved didn't know (and would never return his feelings anyway), he didn't want to live this way. No one knew how he felt.

Tony felt so alone.

He'd spent all his life wondering what it was that made him so different from everyone else. What made him feel isolated, unalike, a freak. But it had dawned on him from an early age, and grew more apparent as he strayed more and more from the past he was supposed to take.

34 years he'd been forced to live this way. 34 long, draw out years, with the will to carry on living diminishing the further he lived for too. There was nothing he could do to save himself.

His family didn't care. His father abused him from an early age, blaming him for not being who he was supposed to be, not bothering to care at all, and even ignoring him when he was in need. When his mother was alive, he wasn't even aware of the problems. The issues weren't present in the early stages of his life, and Tony wished he could return to those days and stay in that state forever.

Although he still knew he still wouldn't feel happy. The thoughts would still be there, the truth yet uncovered, and he would feel empty inside until he realised them himself.

There was something in his life that was missing, and it wasn't until his teenage years, when puberty started to happen, that the something because obvious.

His body was wrong. The changes that were happening were not supposed to be happening. It wasn't supposed to be like this. He wasn't religious of sorts, far from it despite the fact he knew two Nordic deities personally, but at times, he cursed whichever god created and controlled human live, because his was wrong and it was making him suffer because of it.

But it wasn't just this issue that was poised in his mind, there was also everything else that had gone on his life, despite this very personal issue. Being responsible for the death of millions, being captured and tortured, having a man die for him, killing Obie after his betrayal, the scare with the arc reactor, the Avengers, Loki...

Actually, the Avengers and the arc reactor he couldn't care less about. His so called 'team' didn't care for him- they only worked with him because they were told to. He could see it in their eyes, that they didn't like him one bit. And that hurt. They had cared at first, and around that time Tony really thought maybe, just maybe he was starting to feel better. But no one saw him for him. They only saw the person on the outside. The lie, the façade. Although why would they? If they were really his friends, surely they would've noticed he wasn't always okay... But they didn't. Even his closest friends in the entire world didn't even seem to notice.

He was already pretty suicidal around the time of the palladium poisoning, so he didn't see it as an issue to solve. It was merely by bad luck, that SHIELD had forced him to work on it and save himself. He really didn't want to though. Saw no point. Just wanted it all to be over quicker.

But no, the world needed it's famous billionaire philanthropist superhero, so Tony had to hold in his emotions and carry on the best he could. Or at least try to.

It was hard though. Have you ever felt like your existence wasn't necessary? Like no one would care if you were gone? That you were so goddamn worthless, that you weren't even worth saving? The answer for these, and similar questions for Tony, were yes. He felt he was nothing.

Maybe that's why he turned to the blade. And the alcohol. And the flames. And that drugs. Because he was so empty and dead inside already, that he needed these things to know he was still alive somehow.

But they all turned deadly on him in the end. Deadly, yet frustrating. He could never cut himself deep enough for death, always over drank and that ended in throwing it up badly, the flames left him scarred but like with the razors he could never go too far, and all the drugs made him do was go on a momentary high before he came crashing back to reality. That left him with two options: using a gun, or overdosing.

With the gun, he figured it was too loud and would draw unnecessary attention as he lay there trying to die peacefully, and there was always the threat of misplacing the bullet and ending up with even more problems that would leave him begging for euthanasia, if he wasn't able to physically try again himself. It was also more pain than would be necessary for his ideal departure. So that left overdosing on pills.

He'd tried before, but to no avail. Too little and it doesn't work, too many and you just throw them back up. There was also the amount of alcohol to take with them to take into consideration too- as too much of that could also make you throw them up. So he researched, processed all the calculations so that this time, he would make sure to get it right. So that he wouldn't mess up again and finally have some sort of peace with himself.

The bottle of sleeping pills was tightly clutched in his left hand, and he stared down at it with lifeless eyes. In his other hand, he held an already half drunk bottle of Jack Daniels, which he thought would be his last joy on earth before he left, as well as his something to chase down the pills.

Placed near him was also a note. His suicide note. Because, to quote Sherlock, "That's what people do, isn't it." It didn't say a lot, merely explained why he was so depressed, afraid, lonely. He also apologised if anyone would care enough to grieve. He didn't think they would, but he added it anyway, if only for an extra peace of mind for himself. In his last moments though, he didn't even spare it a glance.

As Jarvis had been deactivated minutes ago, and Tony saw no more reasons to delay what he wanted, he took one last deep breath, glancing around his lab with a heavy heart, and raised the bottle to his mouth.

Swallowing all the pills, he coughed a little as some caught in his throat but he forced himself to keep going. He made sure to chase them down with the bottle in his other hand, taking just enough to help them enter his system, then sat back against the workbench he was sitting by and smiled to himself as the pills began to kick in.

With one last shaky breath, he felt his consciousness become foggy and start to slip, his body shifting into a comatose state. Some say you have dreams before you die if the method was sleeping pills, but Tony didn't dream. However after an unknown period of time where there was nothing, he did notice himself as a spirit leaving his body, looking exactly how it should've been all his life. He smiled sympathetically down at the wrong body on the ground, the old one, feeling freer and happier than he had ever been before. He shot it once last sparing glance, before looking up at the ceiling and disappeared, moving on to a better place.

Or perhaps that was what he dreamed, as to anyone else watching this unfold would've only seen his body slumping unconscious, then dead against the bench wall. But as he was already gone, no one could have confirmed this 'dreamless' fact.

Anthony Edward Stark was finally set free, leaving Antonia Ellie Stark behind for good.

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><p><em><strong>After note: I have actually been wanting to write an FTM!Tony fic for a while now, though I do admit, this one is more sad that I originally planned for. I may write some more upbeat FTMvengers fics, but I won't promise anything as I know what I'm like with saying I'll write something (odds are, I probably won't get round to doing it). But regardless, thank you for reading.<strong>_


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